


dont read this im jsut posting this so i have a way to send it to my boyfriend

by setokaiba



Category: D - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 16:23:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12088788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setokaiba/pseuds/setokaiba
Summary: fuck off if you arent trip Die die die di





	dont read this im jsut posting this so i have a way to send it to my boyfriend

He hates his job.

Find the appeal to spending twelve hours per day stuck behind an office desk. Name a single pleasure in waking up for the sole purpose of dealing with morons, signing papers that mean nothing, pointing out erroneous lines of type in others' printed work. He  _hates_ his job, but adores the fortune that comes as reward. And the fame- lest that be overlooked. Naturally the heir to the nation's most successful business does earn the glances of those he should grace with a passby every so often.

Hates the work, loves the play. In order for one to exist, the other's needed. Codependency. Disgusting.

But that's as far as he'll go with such a dogma; falling reliant on anything other than oneself is the highest shame inducer plausible. He'd be more likely to walk without a pulse than to ever depend on another human being for anything.  _Anything-_ he makes no exceptions to this, though some do make themselves.

When he arrives home from that job he so loathes, and ascends the steps of the estate he so loves, he's enough stress to become its own entity, more knots in his muscles than in his necktie. Everyday, routine guides the jacket from off his shoulders to await its cleaning, guides the laces from their holes and belt from its loops. It's a quarter past nine on this particular evening, one on which he's arrived later than normal, and he think if he's ever this tired again, he'd rather take a bullet between the ears.

Silk sheets envelop his throbbing joints. A stretch of arms pushes a crackle all through the sinew, and he  _groans_ , though whether from pleasure or not, he's unsure. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure-  _that's_ his main concern this life. This life, this evening, this  _second._ From the nightstand, atop which he'd emptied his pockets by routine, he retrieves his whole being compressed in a six inch rectangle. He swipes the passcode to unlock the device, swipes through contacts to the bottom. Dial tone is a breath of relief.

Dispatch is a hassle. It's the same thing nearly every single night, shouldn't they know his number by now? Regardless, he's the hottest touch of solace at the familiar tone that presses kisses to ear.

_"You're late tonight."_

He breathes thickly out, pillow cold against the nape of his neck. "Long day."

 _"Oh?"_ the sweet voice trills.  _"Tell me about it?"_

The conversation drips into the trials of the day's gone past. Someone had knocked a fern over in the the lobby ( _"Oh, no. What a mess, huh?"_ ). The printer had malfunctioned for the better part of the morning ( _"Yikes. You fixed it though, right? You're so smart."_ ). He'd lost his favorite signature stamp, only to find his secretary had taken it from his desk without asking ( _"That_ _bitch_ _."_ ). But, when he thinks it over, thinks over the stiffness of his shoulders and the fatigue behind his eyes, there's no greater way to wind down than this. And he relays it aloud, tells the lovely little voice he pays one hundred yen a minute to hear just how much his mood's improved by their nightly discussions. The quiet breath of a laugh only proves his point further.

 _"You flatter me, honey, you really do."_ Unmistakably, there's a smile sewn within it, and he thrums with the pride of having put it there. Then he's an all different thrum, as the sweet lovely lilt shifts sultry, a salacious purr that leaves him panting for purchase.  _"I think it's time I return the favor, hm?"_

"I'd like that," he says back, and he  _would;_ evidenced by the hand already working its way beneath his pants' hem, he most certainly would.

 _"Mmm,"_ hits his crotch direct on.  _"You'd like what? Like me to say all these dirty, dirty things to you, while you touch yourself? Is that it?"_

He doesn't know why he's being teased, doesn't know why he enjoys it. Phone pressed ear to shoulder, his bottoms work their way to his hips.

_"You'd like me to wrap my hot little mouth around your huge, stiff cock and suck you off, right?"_

Dear  _God,_ yes. "I'd let you do anything you wanted to me."

Lightness overtakes the tone.  _"Anything? Oh, baby, you have no idea what you've just agreed to."_

"I've some semblance." The cold tips of his fingers grazing the base of his shaft. He shivers.

 _"Yeah? Because, what I'd_ really  _like to do is lay down and let you fuck me raw. Fuck me until I'm moaning your name and pleading for more."_

He grasps boldly his cock, glasses fogged and slipping past nose's bridge. "Show me."

 _"Show you. You mean like-"_ The words break off into sexy little whines and mewls, the tantalization of  _please, please!_ and the  _mmm, oooh, yes, fuck yes!_ that practically make his hand move on its own in its long, slow strokes.

 _"Mm, fuck, Polaris,"_  plays as another croon. The alias does not catch him off guard as it used to, though he would much prefer to hear his real name being moaned. But like  _hell_  would he ever let it get out that the Togami heir blows his inheritance on calling a phone sex hotline every night. Speaking of blowing-  _"I want my mouth filled with hot pumps of your come. I want to taste you_ so _bad."_

There comes an inevitable point within each call where he finds himself too overwhelmed by the imagery even to speak, reached now as he fondles himself into messy groaning submission.

 _"You're close. I can tell."_  It drags him even more so.  _"Come for me."_

No sane man would oppose; his hand works in hot lengths up down down up up down, brushing his balls and tipping his head back into a throaty moan.

 _"That's it. You're almost there. Oh, God, you're so close, I know it."_  The breathiness drives him  _crazy_ , like wet lips on his throat, fingers of another shoving deep inside him.  _"Come, now. Come for me."_

Refusal is nowhere is sight. He ruins the divinity of his top sheet with a mess of sticky white, dripping in slow melts down his knuckles as he struggles to stop his chest from falling and expanding at such shallow intervals.

Having let his phone slip from his ear, he hardly catches the, "God, you're amazing," that flirts out. He lifts the device back proper, breath heavy in the weaves of his speech. They hold a back-and-forth of commending for several minutes, lids falling in quiet perfection. He folds his glasses to the nightstand, tucks the blanket higher on his waist.

"I have to go," he says just after a yawn into an elbow.

 _"Aw, okay."_  He imagines whoever it is positively wrought by disappointment.  _"Goodnight. Don't keep me waiting again tomorrow, handsome."_

"Wouldn't dream of it," he murmurs, lured into reverie by the lingering dial tone.

For all his class, Togami Byakuya is truly a man of surreptitious simplicity.

* * *

He loves his job.

Not his  _real_  job, but the one practiced more on the sidelines. In fact, he rather despises his actual, formal, able-to-tell-the-relatives-about job. Scanning items and handing out receipts and chirping for everyone to  _have a nice day!_ even if they've just spent the last twenty minutes arguing over the expiration date on a coupon bids him no pleasure in life.

His truest pleasure is doling it to others.

Every break he's allotted throughout the day isn't spent caressing the wisps of smoke in his lungs, but to take on husk of voice, velvety cream that drives the lonely guys  _wild_ , and earns him an impressive sixty yen per minute to boot.

In his pocket sounds a ringing alert at exactly twelve:twenty seven that afternoon, and the grin crawling onto his lips is from more than just the vibration teasing his hip. He pleads with a coworker to fill in his line for a measly ten minutes, convincing him with the urgency in his voice that cries out emergency. It shifts to smoky Sauvignon the second he rounds the corner, answering on the last possible ring.

"Hi." His palm forms a cave over his mouth, using the other to elbow through the door of the men's restroom stall. "I'm so glad you called."

He recognizes the number as one he treats infrequently, though still recalls the deep lush of the voice enough for it to be considered familiar.  _"You had me worried there, Kitten. Thought you weren't going to answer."_

"I'd never ignore you, baby," he purrs, tempting his tone to skate along apologetic. "But it was  _awful_ bad of me to keep you waiting, huh? I think I deserve some kind of punishment."

Ten minutes runs into fifteen before the call ends. He presses the phone back to its pocket cradle, fixes his collar in the tall mirror, breathes away the highlights from his face. A door eeks open behind him, and he freezes, eyeing sideways at the other man who shuffles silently to tap the sink faucet on. They lock glances a gauche moment. The stranger clears his throat, turning at sound's speed to drown their meeting out by the whir of the hand dryer.

He could care less what some nobody in a department store bathroom thinks of him.

Droplets wipe against the thighs of his khakis as he makes his way toward his designated station. Three feet away, he's already groaning, because seeing a customer with their hand pointed in such a fashion and tone such a sharp octave never spells contentment.

The coworker covering for him raises a hand through his messy ginger. "Hey, man. It's not my fault we don't have that here. Try Walmart or something."

"What the problem here?" he asks his his most pleasant,  _yes, of course I love dealing with people and definitely don't consider hanging myself in the belt department every time i pass by it_ , voice, and he relaxes into their locked eyes.

"Thank  _God_  you're back, Naegi. Have fun with this one." He skirts out from the register, proclaiming it's his turn for a break before darting in any direction possible. The true owner of the station clenches molars behind his plastic smile.

"How may I help you today?" From the seethe scrawled about the customer's face, he'd guess it be of the mental variety.

"You can  _help_ me," he begins, stiffening to his full imposing posture. Naegi watches his fingers travel to the inside of his coat, and he's poised to duck and cover until he sees the innocuous item he produces does not coincide to his alarm. By the time the sentence goes to finish, he's forgotten the beginning, but regardless, does not appreciate his wording. "By not being so utterly  _useless_  as you retail workers are known to be."

He feels the edge of a pout starting, but mends it by a snapping quirk upwards. In his grip- vise, at that -is a pair a white framed eyeglasses, which he gestures at in acrimonious points toward the corner. "I need a screw that fits this hole."

 _Don't we all-_ His vivacious to assist personality keeps up its front, attempting to take hold of the glasses to have a better look at them. They're snatched away before he's able, on the grounds that his "filthy hands" needn't touch them. His chest expands in a sigh.

"Well...uh." He swallows a hard note. "I think maybe our eyewear department might-"

"You  _think? Maybe?_ " The haughty bastard scoffs, folding his arms into each other. "If you're truly this incompetent, there's no reason for your employment here."

"I'm just trying to help you,  _sir."_ Between his clamped teeth, his speech is thick, white hot comets disrupting planetary alignment. "Like I said, I'm pretty sure-"

The soliloquy dies off a jingle from his pocket- he blanches a stark pale, retrieving it to check the caller ID. The other coughs up a scoffing impression.

"And you can't even manage to get through a single conversation without checking your phone. Let's see now, you've hit the marks for rude, unprofessional,  _and_ idiotic." He sneers mocking contempt. "Congratulations. Perhaps they'll promote you to the so coveted shopping cart boy."

The long winded insult weaves through his brain without being absorbed, too preoccupied by the chime blaring in his palm. "I'll- I'll see if Kuwata can help you out again. Hold on."

Tile dashes beneath him before he's gauged his response, though hears vaguely the tossed scorn pertaining a request to speak with the store's management. He brakes his near sprint with a glide of feet into the corner of a dressing room. His breath is labored when he slides the call to green. "Hi. I'm so glad you called."

Back to wall, he slides to the floor, panting pretty inflection into the next set of minutes.

Stress can not find him again until his next shift is to begin.

* * *

_"Oh, that sounds just_ terrible.  _What happened afterward?"_

The sheen of curtains billow into evening's breeze. Purple highlights illuminate in the headlights of passing cars through concrete murk. He massages a throbbing temple with two fingertips.

Smooth baritone replaces his natural, sharp bark; no matter what hell he's endured in the day's duration, none of them are of this other's fault, and they're the last one who deserves his impatient snapping. Instead, he trills husky cream into bitter brew, lifting eyes to scan absently the window's gleam.

"I couldn't just sit there like a damn fool with one of my lenses fallen out," he explains in a release of breath. "I had to go into a  _department store,_ like some dirty commoner. It was the most wretched experience of my life."

 _"Sounds like it,"_ is the agreement he so desires.  _"You're way too good for that."_

"I  _know._ " Ocean eyes catch moonlight as they roll. "And the moron who worked there-  _God,_ he had  _no_ idea what he was doing. It's a wonder he was hired at all."

A pretty little  _uck_  melts into his ear.  _"What a jackass. You should've got him fired."_

"Believe me, I didn't put in a good word to his supervisor."

 _"Good."_  Midnight silk caresses him.  _"Nobody puts Polaris Polanski in a corner."_

He sighs in a regal dreaminess as he lay into the plush of comforters. "You always do know just what to say. It's rather remarkable."

_"It's what I'm here for."_

They fade into the tradition of talking just to fill the air with something, ease into the usual smutty grandeur. One it's gone past, and he's struggling to reclaim his breath, he mouths a bit that fascinates himself, even; "I think you're the most wonderful person I've ever known, and I don't even know your real name."

That  _laugh_ \- that gorgeous laugh he'd pay a hundred yen a  _second_ to hear looped -it sounds in reply.  _"You know...I'm not supposed to play favorites, but out of everyone that calls me, I anticipate yours the most."_

He can't stop his  _tch_. "I'm essentially paying you to say that."

 _"I mean it."_ It could be his fantasy, but he swears he hears a smile.  _"If you stopped calling, I don't know what I'd do with myself."_

"You'd manage." Despite the tease, his lips take easy joy.

Pleasantries turn over their shared goodnights, a reluctance forcing his fingers to kill the call. The battery's warmth rolls in his palm a long, thoughtful moment. He's touch of discontented with himself for the way he's so apt to spill romance with this person. This person, of whom he knows nothing of other than they earn a living as a phone sex operator, and that they work under the name  _Kitten._ Rather trashy, he thinks, though it concerns him not what they're called, more so how they behave. They (a pronoun he uses for sheer ambiguity, as he assumes them female, though wishes not to assert that) have a method of working him that's a distant cousin of manipulation, though with undertones so sweet they put birthday cake to shame. They've something so alluring about themself, something he's mesmerized more by with each conversation. Dare he say his affection for them delves a deeper meaning- ludicrous, for the mere fact of knowing virtually nothing of them.

He'd spill pure adoration for them, would he not be made to look an utter fool in its wake.

Aside from that- what respectable adult starts a relationship with their favorite sex worker? He scoffs imagining the dinner conversation-  _H_ _ow'd you two meet? Oh, you know, he called my hotline, and it was love at first masturbation session._ Another throaty noise of disdain. How despicable.

...Though, considering all the times they've spoken of a lust for shared kisses, touches, skin against skin-

 _Preposterous._ He'd have the same amount of luck courting an answering machine. The idea may as well be cleared from his mind entirely.

What he really needs is someone he can trust, someone to fall asleep next to at night and wake up with kisses at sunrise. Someone who, when he reaches for them, is tangible.

He needs to grow the hell up, and face reality's crushing fist. And  _quickly._

* * *

Lying makes him feel bad- really, it does. But if he's not there for his clients, then who else will?

He doesn't recall exactly what he'd said to the sap this time around (something along the lines of, "Oh, of course I love you, too. I wait for your calls everyday.") It leaves an acrid flavor behind; he claims so fondly to adore, and to  _love_  these people of whom's names he forgets the second they hang up. Well- there's an exception to this rule, but by being so, it shatters his Golden Rule. He  _does_ remember a certain someone's name, number, sound of his voice. Remembers he works in business, remembers he himself waits in crave for his digits to flash over his screen.

But that's just it. He's broken his own set boundary, smashed hammer to porcelain.

He's fallen in love with a fucking client. With a  _voice_ , no less. But, but, but- he cannot get over the frustration of it all, because while his days are so awful and his nights trailing close, the single call always works to lighten the ache in his chest. The sweet nothings lilted so keenly to him- and they  _aren't_ nothings, they're  _somethings,_ and he knows it. He knows his favorite person in the whole world to talk to must have some taste of longing beneath his own tongue, or he wouldn't call every single night without fail.

So when he  _does_ fail, on an ordinary Tuesday night, Naegi Makoto's chest seizes into utter agony.

Red LED blinks 2:16 AM back into the reflection of his hazel eyes. He shifts to his back, arms lain flat to either side. A ghosting guides his lips to slip a quiet sigh and a, " _Polaris..."_

Surely something's come up, and he'll explain it all tomorrow.

And when Wednesday rolls by with nary a message, he's grateful the fabric of his sheets isn't so lavish, or he'd feel sour over staining the pillowcases wet.

"Good afternoon. Did you find everything alright?"

It's the same tagline every other minute. He hasn't even the vim in him to put inflection into the words anymore, a monotonous drawl as he moves to scan the items moving along the conveyor toward him. Nothing comes forth, in this particular instance, leading a glance upward toward lights that scorch his exhausted eyes. And he's sure it is those same exhausted eyes that cause him to see the delusion before him.

There's absolutely no chance that the same man who, just last week, called him a rude, unprofessional idiot is standing so calmly to his side, arms folded, expression mild.

But when Naegi rubs a sleeve across his eyes, and the mirage hasn't dissipated, he decides it in his best interest to figure out what is wanted of him.

The man- tall, blonde, lean, marking off each box on his checklist of what makes someone drop dead  _gorgeous -_ enters a staring match with the tile beneath his feet. Something about him reads hesitancy, something a muted radiance. When he touches a finger to his glasses, he notices they're pristine and in tact, and seeing them on his face rather than in his hand only adds to his appeal.

In sudden vigor, he shakes his head; he's simply making up for the loss of favorite nightly conversation. He's simply mending his broken heart by finding every guy who crosses his path to be hot.

"Hard to believe you're still employed here."

Sure he's hot. Until he opens his mouth.

Naegi inhales deeply through his nose, out through past his lips. "...How may I help you today?"

The little  _hmph_ he deals out is so characteristic of an asshole of his caliber, he's surprised confetti doesn't rain from the ceiling. "My carafe fell off the counter this morning. I need a replacement."

"It  _fell?_ "

Behind those handsome frames, searing blues thin in a glower. "Are you hard of hearing?"

It seems he cannot last a moment in this man's presence without feeling the overwhelming urge to snarl. "Follow me."

They travel in silence to the aisles designated for kitchenware. His haunches crouch beneath him as he scans the lowest shelves, a touch of pique writing his twisted frown.

"I don't think we carry just the carafe part," he informs the one hovering over him. "You might have to buy a whole new coffee maker."

"And fund your paycheck with more of my hard earned fortune than necessary? I don't think so. Keep looking."

Naegi would like to tell him to  _keep looking_ , but such context is no way to speak to a valued customer, so he turns without complaint to look across a higher shelf. The touch of pique turns to a pot of simmering rancor as his search gains traction. He's prepared his best concession speech, best wholehearted apology he can manage with the shards impaling his chest, when a single vibration surges along his femur and he's grappling at it swift enough to lose his balance. But it matters not to him if he's sitting on his ass in the middle of Target, because he's calling! It's got to be him, it's-!

It's his sister.

Call Rejected.

"Is this a habit of yours?" comes from five feet above his head. "Just, answering phone calls at all seconds of the day, no matter the circumstance?"

"No, I..." He chokes a feigned cough into an elbow. "I'm sorry. I'll, uh, keep- keep looking for your...thing."

"Eloquent." Naegi feels the sting of his gaze following him as he rises, brushes at his lap. "If you're going to put on a sob show for me, at least give me the tragic back story."

Pause, falter. Surely that's an abnormal thing to say to someone considered still a stranger. Surely, too, it's even less usual to answer it back at full force. "I'm just waiting for someone to call, and it's sort of really important. See, there's this person I  _really_  like, and-"

"I don't need to hear of your romantic endeavors." When he looks upward, it's to a palm offered flatly his direction. He frowns.

"You're the one that asked..."

"And surely I've gone mad." His hand moves to adjust his lenses again, and Naegi swears the tone of pink beneath them isn't mere imagination. "Have you found what I need, or will I be forced to make another complaint of your ineptitude?"

" _Complaint,"_ he murmurs to himself alone, shifting to peruse an adjacent aisle. "'Help, this cashier can't magically make exactly what I need appear out of thin air.'"

The bite delivered next halts his pulse. "No, I'll tell them, 'Your employee  _Makoto_ is utterly deplorable, and even the douchebag with the barbell stuck through his tongue was of better assistance to me.'"

Mindless, he lifts a hand to cover the sheen of his name tag.

After a dull moment's surveying, he mumbles from mouth's corner, "You know, it's pretty disrespectful to call someone you just met by their first name."

From his throat out lets a form of a scoff- one that shocks him into bolt upright. The action prompt's the stranger's startle. "What's wrong with you now?"

"...Nothing," rolls slick from his mouth. He blinks. "Can I ask what your name is, though?"

"If this has to do with my calling you by your-"

"No, it doesn't." Intimidation scales him at the glare faced from interruption. "I'm just...curious."

"Not that you  _need_  to know," and he relays the breathy hitching noise anew. "...Togami Byakuya."

Disappointment is his flavor. "Oh."

" _Oh?"_ The cross to his arms falls undone to gesture widely at either side of him. " _That's_ what you say to knowing you're conversing with the single scion to the country's most prestigious corporation?  _Oh?!_ "

"Sorry." Though is he? "I didn't  _know_ I was conversing with the country's most prestigious scion. Or, whatever you said."

That noise again- a trio of them, a total loss of words. "You- You pathetic  _mutt._ You...I could crush you into the dirt with my heel, and you'd be liable to thank me for it."

"Um...no, I really don't think I would."

"Oh, I assure you-  _assure you!_ You will regret this encounter. You'll-"

Whatever else is said is drowned out from his perspective. This  _Togami Byakuya_  clacks off in a fit of hands tossed upward and ringing bark of a voice. What he'd deemed himself- a  _scion._ Naegi thinks him more adept for the role of  _diva._

A handsome diva, but a diva all the same.

Around him, empty kitchenware mocks the cavity in his chest.

* * *

Streetlamps gleam on the pale of his knuckles.

His grip on the steering wheel nearly halves it. Togami Byakuya anger is not average anger- it's the ugly manifestation of every misdeed ever committed in his line of vision. It's white hot lividity searing holes in his leather seat covers. And, once he's arrived home and beelined toward the kitchen, it's the smash of a crystal wine glass to the fine granite countertops, and the serene placement of the next one aside the remnants.

The rim kisses Jack Daniels flush on the mouth, and his own turns it ménage à trois. Half the drink drains in a single pull.

He's dizzied on his turn around, glass in one hand, to make for the den. Settled into the plush of his most desired sofa spot, the evening news is his mistress.

But his true ardor- that's found in rage again, and she returns full force to catch his lax gone. He's angry-  _he's so so angry! -_ at himself, more than anything. He's angry at himself for wasting his lunch break to stop at the very same superstore that'd been his downfall the week prior, just for the off chance of perhaps running into the very same worker as the first time. He's angry at himself for, even hours past the incident, not having calmed himself from it. Maturity suits him best, though he finds it lacking in him all too freshly.

He's supremely pissed off, as well, that he can't even recall exactly why he's so angry.

He knows the cashier- the  _annoying_ one, with the pretty eyes and the stupidly precious voice -had set him off with his smart quips, but he can't muster the memory to remember what they were. And, if that's the case, then  _why is he still so mad?_ There must be something else pinning him the wall of ire, some other force that's captured him this wroth chokehold. Perhaps it's sexual frustration. The last time he'd gotten off was over three days before, on the night he'd decided to end his farcical love affair with his cell phone.

And then his insides all sink into dolor, and he thinks he understands what has him so upset. He misses-

Wait. How had he described that cashier? His face darkens well past the flush of light inebriation.

There's got to be some kind of bug going around at the office. Another reason to hate his job. None of those grimy bitches ever bother to cough into their elbows.

Another  _nother_  reason to hate his job- he's so fucking  _exhausted,_ that when the doorbell chimes through the woodwork, standing feels the work of lucifer personally. He does manage to drag himself up after a moment's hesitation, and he doesn't even consider the fact that nearing eight PM is rather late for a friendly visit, or that he has no friends to actually visit him. Or that he's a mess of disheveled hair and half unbuttoned top, a quarter glass of hard liquor in one palm.

Refined. He snorts derisively as he swings open the front door.

His ribcage suppresses the thud behind it from total implosion.

There's absolutely no chance that the same man who, just this afternoon, he'd compared to the very dirt beneath his feet, jacket pulled tight around his middle, gloved hands fumbling with a cardboard box half his size.

But he's still there even after the explosion of lid to lid contact, the- how did it go, exactly?  _Pretty eyed precious voiced? Yes, him._ He's standing on his front porch struggling with a box, and before he's even the time to explain himself, Togami's tipped the glass one hundred eighty degrees and sears his throat with the rest of it.

"Uh...sorry if I'm interrupting something," Naegi says, bumping a knee to knock the box higher in his hold. "I just wanted to bring you this. And- don't think I'm a stalker, or anything. I called your office and someone there gave me your address."

The thought hadn't even crossed his mind. What, does though- "...Come in."

To the glass of the coffee table meets cardboard. He takes hands to the top flaps, his guest standing solid in his peripheral, hands resting in each a pocket.

"The box is so big, 'cause it's mostly bubblewrap," he explains casually. "I didn't want it to break on the way over here."

And as if it weren't expected- "A carafe."

Naegi nods, tempting the couch arm closest to him with a light perch. "Turns out we do carry them, after all."

"Ah." He rises, a noble act for the rush to his head, sidestepping past the short table before gracing him a turn around. "Don't sit there."

His body straightens, following the flap of Togami's hand shooing him sideways. In a slow movement, he slides onto the cushion meant for placing oneself on, and it satiates the compulsive homeowner enough for him to continue his path toward a separate room. He clicks the new item into place (miraculously, though he thinks nothing of it, it matches the coffee maker model and fits perfectly) and fiddles with several switches until he's satisfied enough with it. Filter, water, press start. Easy. No one needs to know he's yet to ever make his own coffee before.

He's not sure why he's even doing so at such an hour as this, but he feels it polite to offer a guest a drink. When he's asked the very same inquiry he's taken of himself, his final answer is, "I have to make sure it works. I don't want it in my home if it's useless to me."

No qualms meet it. Neither are they spilt from his own mouth when he drops himself back into his seat to find the wrappings all folded where they came from and the box tucked aside the sofa.

Annoying as hell, but at least he's neat.

Or- is it even so, really? Is he  _really_ irritating, or had he build that persona up  _for_ him in order to sunder the sync of their dreams? Is he annoying, is he vexing, is he awful terrible irritating, or is Togami Byakuya afraid of getting wet the sutures about himself? Is he-?

"Did you fix your glasses?" shreds through his calamity. He whips his head toward the perpetrator to lilt slow affirmation.

Another time, there's a nodding of head. "It's funny- a friend of mine just broke his glasses the other day, too."

"And I care, because?"

"I don't know." He shrugs into a near undetectable frown. "Just a funny coincidence."

"Yes, hilarious." His eyes swivel within their sockets. "He and I must be connected by some divine power of glasses breaking."

Then he laughs, because  _that_  fits better the definition of  _funny-_ and Togami gags in a most ungentlemanly way, because...well, he'd pay a hundred yen a minute to hear that on loop. He blames it on the booze, of which he'd refilled on his trek to the kitchen. More of it slinks into his bloodstream in a long dip.

"Maybe," Naegi says into the proceeding calm. "But, to be honest, I don't think you two would get along very well. He's more of a... _people person._ No offense to you."

His eyeroll (another one) relays that none's been taken. "Is this the same  _friend_ who refuses to return your calls?

The other breeds a new hybrid of shock and melancholy. "How'd you guess..." And it's not a question, but miserable rhetoric.

Togami observes him a moment, index crossing lips, before it slides down to allow speech. "If it's any consolation," His drinks swirls in his idle rock of the glass. "I'm going through some rather troubling courtship issues at the moment, as well."

"Yeah?" He could be imagining things, but Togami believes he notices him relax further back. To the urging, he nods, swallows gold, vomits up a catastrophic oversharing.

"I'm... _torn,_ if you will." Hands to lap, they fidget against one another. "A relationship that's purely unrealistic, or...well, I haven't found my  _or_  yet, but, you get it. Whatever." Lift. Drink. Place. "Why am I telling you all of this? This isn't your business."

"You're right, it's not." Starshine pours from his lips' plush. He inches closer inward. "But...can I just say; that's _really_ similar to my situation."

His glare is an instinctive reaction he rushes to soften. "You can say whatever you'd like," mumbles into his glass's rim.

Naegi, the annoying-is-he-actually-annoying-well-he's-definitely-gorgeous cashier from the stupid awful commoner department store, runs a hand through his unruly brunette. "I mean...I don't know. I guess I really do want to be with this guy, but it's...complicated. I feel like I don't know enough about him, and yet...and yet he's my closest friend at the same time, you know?"

"That's..." His fingers quiver around the stem. "That's remarkably similar to my situation."

"Well, yeah," Naegi laughs, teases further, "That's what I said. How drunk are you?"

He sets the drink to the glass of the coffee table. Apparently,  _very,_ if his next spilling of the heart is any indication. Palms go flat to his knees, and he swivels the slightest fraction to face him more directly. "Explain to me why it is that you're here."

Perplexity writes over his face. "...To bring you a new coffee pot thingy."

"No." Swivel. Closer. "Explain to me why I've  _let_ you be here. I've hardly known of your existence for a week, and yet here you are, sitting in my home. I don't let people I've known a  _year_ sit in my home, Makoto. And yet, here you are. And yet... _here you are."_

"Yeah..." He blinks, slow, concerned. "Here I am."

"We've had a total of two encounters, on both of which I've degraded you into nothingness, and now you're here, in my living room, listening to me speak." His hands wring useless into the open air. "I hardly know you at all, and yet all I can think about doing right now is kissing you."

Closer. Their knees brush together. Naegi's eyes are a pale green constellation that hypnotizes him into the mist of his siren's song.

Closer. "...You can. If- If you...really wanted to. I wouldn't pull away."

Further. "But I don't even...I don't even  _like_  you."

"That's okay," he says in such haste it blooms rose at his cheekbones. "...I think you're kind of a dick, to be honest."

" _Precisely."_ Their gazes lock flame to flicker. "You think I'm a dick, and you  _still_ brought me a new coffee pot thingy. I thought you were an annoying little bastard, and I  _still_  made it a point of stopping by your work to see you today. I've been thinking about you, and I didn't even  _notice_. I'm...I'm  _drawn_ to you, in some way. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

There's no evidence to the negative or the affirmative; there's just the quiet of the eight-at-night night, a news story about a forest fire illuminating their forms that are so,  _so close-_ the coffee pot thingy simmers lowly a room away- the pass of tires down the street echo behind their ears- night- forest fire- coffee- tires- night- fire- coffee- tires- night-

And then Naegi Makoto leans up and kisses him, and his mouth tastes of pure liquor, and they feel as though they've known each other a decade.

"We are not having sex tonight," he assures against the twin of their lips. A hand runs down his nape, and into the lock sounds a muffled, "Deal," and then he's pushed to his back with a stranger straddling his torso.

Closer.

* * *

Irony, irony, irony. It's all so damn ironic.

Those lonely guys he so caters to- he's become one himself.

He's a lonely, lonely stupid guy, who thinks with his heart rather than his head.

Speaking of head, he's still reeling from the sharp tang on his tongue all through his drive home.

He'd said no sex. It'd only taken a third drink and a ghost of fingers over his crotch to cajole him into oral.

But for what? What had he hoped to accomplish by hooking up with some random prick who occasionally comes into his store just to make his shift even more miserable? Well, for one- he'd filled the void in his chest. And that's where the aspect of solitude ties in. He's done what all lonely losers do. Meaningless almost-sex with someone he hardly knows, for the sole purpose of quelling his all over ache.

And it'd worked.

Momentarily, at least. If the ditsy little smile stroking his lips is any evidence.

He turns onto a short through street. Where thoughts would normally buzz about his head, it is instead the quiet tranquility he's known only in rare intervals. He sighs a melody of contented air. His only regret is not getting his phone number.

Some sort of mysterious majesty; as if on cue, his ( _guess)_ cell phone vibrates, clattering discordantly against the center console. One hand drops from the steering wheel to rummage for it, only to immediately lose his grip on it at the sight of the caller's digits.

He swerves to a parking spot to collect himself a moment, realizing just in proper time to actually  _answer_  the call before the ringing dies off. A breath, a clearing of throat, a swipe right.

"You've kept me waiting," he says in smoky veneer. Though he thrums in delight, there's no reason to give out rewards in the face of misconduct.

The opposite end crackles in familiarity.  _"I know, Kitten, I know. I've been...busy."_

"What could be more important than me, hm?" An arm folds over his front. "I've missed hearing your sexy voice every night."

 _"I know,"_ he repeats, and it does not sound its natural dialect of sweet undertones.  _"But I'm here now."_

"Mmm, thank goodness." It's meant to be an act, sure, but Naegi cannot help the heat breaking from beneath his collar at the thought of his dear one. There's a break in their chatter whilst he slips his jacket from his shoulders. When prompted to tell about what he's currently doing, he takes a glance around his surroundings; a murky black streetway lines front and behind. "...I'm just in bed, thinking about you."

It's appeasing enough.  _"Thinking about me how?"_

"Thinking about you pinning me down, tearing my clothes off and licking me all over." In his rear view mirror, he catches the shine of headlights passing him. His mouth twists into displeasure, then pushes into drive. His mouth seems to run on its own accord. "You know, I hooked up with a guy tonight, and the whole time, I imagined it was you."

 _"Oh?"_ Vaguely, he hears a shifting, perhaps that of blankets, clothing, fingertips.  _"Was he any good?"_

"Not nearly as good as I know you would be." Always has he pictured his anonymous lover a tall, muscular beauty, hands soft and eyes softer still. He thinks him perfect- still would, even should his fantasy not match with the reality of his appearance.

Pride fills his inflection.  _"That's fucking right. ...Though, I must admit, I'm somewhat hurt."_

"Hurt?"

_"Yeah, hurt. Really fuckin' hurt, because you went and played on someone else's swingset."_

"...Have you been drinking?"

 _"Not at all."_  He hears a slight cough distant from the receiver.  _"I'm just saying, it'd've'd been nice to ask me beforehand."_

His eyes graze over a nearby stop sign, passing it without second thought. "You know I phone-fuck a dozen guys a day, right?"

 _"That's not real,"_ he says.

"And what we have  _is?_ " It comes off more harshly than intended, though the client seems unfazed.

_"I like to think so."_

There's silence, silence, grating, screaming silence, and before he can make a dope of himself and say  _me too,_ his turn to speak is stolen for a double take.

 _"How would you feel if I were to..._ see  _someone."_

In all candor, he'd never considered it.

In all candor, it clenches his heart into unmendable suffocation.

"There's nothing I could do about it." And he realizes it himself, but its spoken next either way:  _"That's not a feeling, Kitten."_

"Well..." He passes into the lot outside his apartment and shifts into park. "I think I'd be...happy for you. I just want you to be happy, baby, really."

Neither of them are convinced by the answer.

 _"I see."_ Branches dance moonlit shadows onto his windshield. He waits for more, but thinks it not soon arriving, and swallows the messy sappy grief back into his lungs.

"Listen, sweetie, honey," he purrs, clicking quiet up the steps to his front door. "I care for you. But we both have our own lives, y'know? If you find someone..." He stops to close tightly his eyes against their sudden sting. "... _better_  than me, then by all means, go for it."

The following pause fills him in foreboding. Describably, it's the sense one takes of a tragedy upon (more irony) a phone call at an odd hour. Yet, it's a phenomenon so  _in_ describable, his insides feel as though they wish to disobey captivity.

_"...I-"_

"Don't say it," he pleads, back falling against the wall outside his bedroom. "Please, don't-"

_"I love you."_

To the floor beneath him, one that seems so far, far down, he sinks into sitting, forehead dipping to bent kneecaps. "I told you not to say it..."

No remorse is offered.  _"How am I to keep it to myself any longer? I'm laying here, torn up with jealousy over you and whomever you chose over me."_

"Believe me, honey," he curses himself for the instinctive petname usage at such an inopportune time, "...if I could have you, I would."

 _"Then have me,"_ fills him in longing agony.  _"Have me- all of me. I want you just as badly."_

"Polaris-"

He falters at a harrowing echo of a cynical laugh.  _"Don't call me that. That's not me. You want to know something? My name is actua-"_

Surprise over takes him at the abrupt cut off. He lifts the phone from his cheek to meet the circling of a wheel, and a darkened screen. A press of the power button greets him with a flashing symbol for a battery gone dead.

He envies the fate of it.

* * *

The oak of his office desk is a far cry from the comfort of pillows and satin, but his skull feels like someone's inside of it running a jackhammer. He folds his forearms loosely to rest the throb atop them.

It's not that he's a heavy drinker, and that in itself is the problem. He's  _not_  a heavy drinker, so when he allows himself to indulge, there's the inextinguishable crave to make up for lost time. Inextinguishable, that is, until he's drunk enough to consider his memories able to be excavated by only the most skilled archaeologists. His muscles sing in day old ache.

It doesn't help, either, that he'd been thrust from his unconsciousness by the sharp smell of coffee burning against the pot.

He'll have to buy another carafe.

But- once the archaeologist sweep dust from rocky recollection -he decides he'd be better off not purchasing it from someone who's mouth had been wrapped around his dick less than twelve hours ago.

Either way, he finds his superior stance awaiting the automatic doors outside Target within the first five minutes of his afternoon break.

Checkout line number seven is lit up and  _ready_   _to_   _serve_ , and he strolls to it with unmistakable energy. He'll steal his gloom away, like a knight to his prince, maybe lean in close and-

"'Sup. How can I help you today?"

His nose wrinkles in howling disgust.

"Where's Makoto?" he asks with most assertion than necessary. The face of vague familiarity offers an anxious grin.

"He's off today," Kuwata Leon informs him, tending still to the customer at the head of the queue. "But I can take a message."

"I don't need you to  _take_   _a_   _message_." A bite clamps together solid. "...I need a carafe."

Occupied by scanning a barcode, Kuwata's eyes do not meet his conversation partner's. "Gotta be honest, man. I got no idea what that is."

To further bickering over his lack of culture, he glances up to huff annoyance his way. "You don't have to go through me, y'know. Usually people just walk in and find the things they need by themselves."

"They do fucking  _what?_ "

Vexation breaks away to humor again. "Ohoho- look at who the dumb one is now."

"I am," he assures, mouth a flat scowl. A cart rolls lone to his left. It'd be simple to take hold of it and leisure through the aisles, though that'd make him just the same as everyone else doing the same and- no, just  _no_.

He flicks a look of curiosity his way. Several items beep through the scanner in the time he remains contemplative.

"You and Makoto...you're  _friends_ , am I correct?"

* * *

Days off are a bliss incomparable.

So when the chime on his nightstand rings out so unapologetically jarring, he'd rather a hammer than bare hand alone.

That bare hand snakes out from the comforter tugged up past his neck, smacking fingers to the side table to grapple for the device. He squints at the ID, all the fatigue escaping him in a single pinch.

"Hi," he coos in morning husk. "Before you get upset- I didn't hang up on you last night. My phone died. I promise I'd never-"

_"What the hell are you going on about?"_

"Wha-?" It's not who he'd expected, not anyone he recognizes, even. When he asks just whom he's speaking with, the sharp one word response leads him to more questions than answers. But he figures, in his awake-twenty-seconds haze, the number he read must have not coincided to the one he thought he had. "How did you get my number?"

" _If you can ask my coworkers for my home address, then I can ask yours for your cell phone number."_

Fair. His tired sigh melts into a wide yawn that his popping ears still detect a tut of disapproval at.

 _"Are you just waking up?"_  Unintentionally its volume works to do so further. _"It's noon."_

As if to double check veracity, he lifts to his elbows, glancing to the clock. Sure enough- 12:19. "Sorry. I don't get to sleep in a lot."

 _"Clearly."_  Naegi swears he can  _hear_  the roll of his eyes. His own widen at further listening.  _"I need a carafe."_

He sinks down into the sheets again. "I just got you one."

Pause. Quiet.  _"...It was defective. It ruined my coffee."_

"I'm sure it wasn't..." But the effort just isn't present. For as little as he does know of this person, he's certain of the fact that he's  _terribly_  exasperating. "Okay. I'll get you another one. But you're paying for it this time."

_"You say it as though it's some sort of imposition for me to spend nine hundred yen."_

He smirks; a push through of bangs frees the lift of brows into a long inhale.

 _"Oh,"_  he interjects before Naegi's the chance to talk.  _"And...don't bring it to my house. I don't need you spreading your department store germs in my home again."_

 _Exasperation (n.), a living manifestation known as Togami Byakuya-_  "Where am I supposed to bring it, then?"

Breeze billows the early morning sunshine through his window panes. He grasps the cotton blanket higher onto his shoulders.

Reply takes its sweet time arriving.  _"...Perhaps we could meet at an eatery nearby."_

What catches him most is the absurdity of the chosen vernacular. Out sputters, on instinct, unabashed amusement. "Are you trying to ask me out?"

 _"It only seems proper, considering we've already hit third base."_  Despite the harsh in his tone, Naegi melts into the schoolboy cuteness of the situation. He's set to agree, but a trio of beeps are set to halt it.

"Uh, hold on. I have to take another call." And in haste, "But- yes, I'd love to go out with you, Byakuya."

He clicks off the call before any snideness can damper the pace to his pulse. A twist of sheets follow his turn onto his other side, dreamy glaze over tongue as he mewls, "Hi. I'm so glad you called."

Water swirls shame into the drain at his feet.

He calls it shame to make himself feel a decent person- but, really, he loves his job.

Loves his job, loves his life, at the moment, too. Loves his life because a tall handsome business man has just asked him on a date, and his only task is to trounce between every department store in the city again to find another coffee pot thingy.

Naegi Makoto does not get invited on many dates. He's average in every criteria that makes for someone desirable (handsome, intelligent, successful, etcetera). Not to say he  _lacks_  them. He's just...average. Dime a dozen, one could call it.

So Naegi Makoto does not get invited on many dates. Which is a shame ( _real_  shame this time, not what he runs a towel through now) because he's willing to do a lot more than the  _average_  man would.

Willing is too weak a word.

He's  _eager_.

And he's no brothel star (he prefers the term  _coquette_  if anything), but there's some wonderful  _joy_  elicited in him from making people happy. And if talking to some sap in a slutty voice and professing affection (or giving head in someone's living room with the evening news on behind them) is what makes people happy, then far be it from him to hole that away. He's talented mainly in making others feel good about themselves.

He's not talented at all in memory, though; it takes him over an hour to find the store that had stocked the single carafes the first go around. There's one left on the shelf, and he hasn't the time to repackage it into safety, so he drives extra slow down the road with the little divots all through the concrete.

The  _eatery_  chosen (he'd called back to claim details) sits six miles from his apartment, four from the carafes-r-us. He'd chosen business casual for his attire, because his date hadn't specified, but his date seems like a business casual type of person. He's early, evidently, as he spots no sign of the black corvette that'd he'd seen (almost dinged) in his driveway the night prior. Drippy snow slush curves along his wipers. He switches them on, since the engine's running to keep the heat on anyway, and the metronome is a fucking Xanax.

Fifteen minutes glide by before a shadow breaks the clear view through his side window, and his heart quickens in the light of anxiety.

Togami says null, until Naegi's shifting out of the front seat only to turn back in lieu of realization to grab the box.

A glare tempts his water lines, but his tone is soft among the song of evening wind. "Leave it for now."

It's such a  _duh_  that he nearly stings a palm across his own face.

But he's not two for two on idiocy yet; he finds, as they're seated down behind plastic menu pages, that he's the perfect balance of classy and casual. He even thinks he could stand to lose the tie, though he likes the way seaglass eyes had swept him in such curt impression. It stays, and he stays, and he doesn't realize he's staring at the one across from him until it is pointed out in a grating snap of an inquiry. He blinks- he doesn't know if he was looking  _at_  him or  _though_ him, perhaps a mix of both. Either way, an apology tumbles from his tongue, and the next thing he knows is the silent movie around him all over again. He sees him speaking. Sees- the complete wrong sense to fill in the blank. But that's as far as his focus extends, considering the buzz behind his eyes that grasps tyrannically his attention.

The thoughts he adopts could not pick a worse time to take him. He's caught in tight reminder of the night preceding this one. Candle wicks flicker in his irises; what'd been spilt between them...it'd seemed, in the moment, pure mania, no process of contemplation to back it. And he just vaguely recalls the filler fluff surrounding the single sharp impaling his brain. The,  _I'm drawn to you,_ that'd played his capillaries like harp strings.  _I'm drawn to you-_ and he'd refused the surface atop his tide pool haze, because it's astounding when someone says out loud just  _exactly_ what'd been in his head.

Something's connecting them. Something supernatural, he dares. Something other than their brushing fingertips.

His eyes fall to it in a quixotic cream gaze. He's not sure who reached for who, but there's no denying the intertwined hold, and Togami's  _still_ talking about whatever it is that he's yet to catch a syllable of. To be fair, the daydream had to do with him, so it's not as though he'd been  _totally_ ignoring him. Him- his date. Frost scratches fever down his spine.  _His date_ is speaking, and he hasn't even been listening.

There's an attempt, but within a minute's half, he's come full circle back into reverie.

Their hands. Their hands, their hands, their  _hands._ How is it so  _natural_ that they should connect this way? How is it that they've had enough interactions to count on one hand ( _hand hand hand hand han-)_ and yet, he already feels himself so comfortable in this person's presence? He can't fathom it, can't explain it, and-  _God,_ those hands, those eyes, that face. He's perfect. He's so fucking perfect, and he's on a date with him. He's on a date with someone he, so recently, thought to be an incredible bastard of a human being. Doesn't understand it, doesn't understand that, when he lowers his voice an octave, that suddenly he's drug from his personal train of thought and so compelled to finally  _listen_ , if not for the content, then for the fact that- that,  _oh,_ that voice is just  _so_ delightful his toes could curl, heart could stop, eyes could glaze.

Nothing of the situation makes much sense, but he can't find a reason to care anymore. His fingers (those not laced into another set) reach to pluck the stem of a wine glass, and he doesn't remember ever seeing a waitress, and yet here he is, sipping Cabernet that probably cost more than a month's worth of rent. He thinks he doesn't need the alcohol to feel the warmth that spreads in his chest as he idles in the wake of Togami Byakuya's delectable palavering.

The haze of tone travels to the blue behind lenses' sheen. Naegi examines the light filtering through the gorgeous cobalt, until they blink as if gaining consciousness for the day, and the lips below them halt their incessant movement. He tilts a questioning look his way, to which he receives a retraction of connection, a clearing away to that perfection.

"...You'll have to excuse me," he says as he stands, straightening his sleeves in absent fiddling. Evidently, he  _will_ have to, because Togami takes direction wayward without any further explanation.

Naegi rests a cheek to his knuckles.

That same sensation builds up in his abdomen again- that feeling of knowing and unknowing colliding against one another. It's an awful sickly curl though his guts, one nothing beneath absolute panacea will ever hope to cure.

Tipping his wine glass back until its transparency returns is a good start, though.

Taps ring to the tablecloth. A chandelier gains his focus, counting the bulbs until he's distracted enough to care about what he can't figure out. It's as though he's ascended a layer of space.

Then his hip vibrates, and he's the wonderful Apollo impression of a crash landing.

A glance over both shoulders for no reason other than courtesy. He shimmies the device into his palm. His complexion fronts printer paper.

A strong hesitation battles against his impulse, but it'd be impossible to keep him clean for a full day's length.

"Hi?" He wonders if the pinch to his expression is audible. "You're awfully early."

 _"Listen,"_ the familiarity presses through static.  _"I need to know something."_

"What is it?" A server trails by his, leading a group of diners, and he flinches. But to anyone else, his conversation sounds innocuous. Should his luck remain, then it will remain as so.

There's a pause.  _"Is it normal to sleep with someone on a first date?"_

Naegi hasn't the faintest clue how to reply. Fortunately, Kitten's much more clever than he.

"Depends on who it is." His purr suggests a deeper meaning. But he pales, next, because- "...You're on a date with someone?"

Not a pause this time, but a sigh, dripping in cafard's early development.  _"Don't act that way. I'm doing this to get over you."_

Harsh. Still...no, he thinks there no alternative.  _Harsh._ "I...I'm sorry."

 _"Don't,"_ he says again.  _"I know_ you  _know this is what's best for both of us."_

"It doesn't have to be," he finds himself spitting, and it's just plain  _ridiculous;_ all night, not one thought of his faceless paramour had crossed his mind. And now, should his desperation gain fruit, he'll be trapped between the cusp of two separate lovers. He shakes his head, lowers it to duck more inward. "We talked about this last night, don't you remember, baby?"

 _"No."_ Some sort of strange breeze muffles his voice from the background.  _"I don't recall our conversation. But that's irrelevant."_

"So, you called me just to flaunt the fact that you're seeing someone else?"

Stark opposite.  _"Again, no. I had a question and no one else to ask."_

"Oh, I see," his teeth clench. "I'm just someone you call when you need advice, now. Great."

He's not sure what's bidding him to such upset over the situation. The bite he receives in response does more hindering than helping.

 _"You do understand that you and I are not together, right?"_ It seems a legitimate inquiry despite the facetious delivery.  _"We don't even know each other. There's no reason for you to be jealous."_

How ugly a word. Naegi glowers at his cutlery. "I'm not. I just think it's pretty rotten of you to say you love me, and then call to tell me you're on the brink of a hook up a day later."

 _"Love you?"_ The whooshing ambiance dies out, as does his words. Naegi would guess the silence is his gnawing recollection of their last conversation. He doesn't know if he's going to speak again (assumes he is- for all his prowess, that man's a definite chatterbox), but he'd rather air his own laundry.

"I don't understand what's happening to us," his lips quiver around. "Just last week, we were fine, and then you stopped calling out of nowhere, and now...now you're over me completely? ...You're more than just a client to me. I really do care about you."

 _"Prove it to me."_ The abruptness surprises him.  _"Prove to me that this relationship can realistically continue, and I'll leave this person right now for you."_

"I..." he swallows. The lights are blinding. "I don't...I don't know what to say."

_"Exactly."_

That's enough for him to swipe the call to an end. He places the device screen down aside him, hand moving robotic to clasp over his mouth. Sears singe up his chest.

At the very least, most don't get to say they've been paid by the minute to be broken up with.

His forehead thunks to the tabletop.

"Forgive me, I didn't realize I was interrupting your nap time."

The piercing sarcasm is the lift to his chin and the alarm though his wet eyes. Togami peers a peculiar note at him as he reclaims his seat.

A smile forces his teeth to bare. "No, I'm glad you're back."

And he is- so inexplicably glad, relieved, solaced. He came back. He returned, as he said he would. It's a comforting phenomenon to witness that not every single person in the world is out to knead his abandonment issues. The beam he takes on is pure now, genuine joy at the sight of him, at the thought. This time, he's sure who it is that reaches to twine their hands, and Togami seems only the lightest touch of surprise at his abrasiveness.

"I really like you," he says sans rationale. "I know we haven't known each other that long, but you're right; I feel like we have some kind of...chemistry."

" _Chemistry_..." wisps like smoke from his lips, the very same set that press and part against his own in the hour passing, when the moon's glistening in full power and the decadence they've indulged in does not compare to their fleeting heat of skin of skin in the front seat of his Toyota. Naegi's himself in the driver's seat, and the legs astride his hips and the mouth on his throat drive him to inanity. It's a fucking sauna in the little vehicle. His ears ring.

The only thing he can think about is  _sex on the first date, sex on the first date!,_ and the idea squeezes him in so much ecstasy he'd fail a drug test.

In delicious contrast, his last phone conversation is nowhere near his mind; each time it breathes close enough to the boundaries, there's a hand on his chest or a tongue in his mouth that make him wonder what that vague sensation of near nostalgia could have possibly been.

He's never attended a better dinner date.

"We..." he starts, distractions tingling in the cold lengths on fingers on his clavicle. "We should go somewhere."

Their lips pop a sweet melody of breakaway. Togami nods, and in semi pusillanimity guides their forms separate. He grips the box taking up the passenger's spot and whips it frantic behind before claiming the seat. It's not until he's pressing belt into lock that the dull shatter registers with him.

"...I need a new carafe."

His laughter's an adorable snort of amusement, head ducking forward as he shifts into drive. "I have a coffee maker at my place."

He doesn't think about how Togami is going to retrieve his car from the lot, because the hand on his thigh is like lava melting in his plasma. He doesn't think about the drive home or the walk up the steps, because the kisses on his neck make him giggle in all kinds of delight. He doesn't think about how warm his face must be when he falls back into a flash of top sheet, and his hands are gliding along his jawline, and the tie  _is_ coming off now, alongside his jacket and pants, because- well, that one's rather self explanatory, really.

He kisses him, and it's a drink of total bliss. Without meaning to release it nor to necessarily repress it, he  _moans,_ in the brush of winter's stinging scorch; he moans into the teeth on his top lip. Sugar at the core. Divine.

And that is the very first domino.

The hands, flat by either side of his face, curl into blankets. Togami lifts out of the kiss, glasses slipping down his nose from the height at which he peers downward at him. He doesn't bother to fix them. Naegi freezes.

"...Is something the matter?"

Quite possibly, given the protraction of his staring. A full minute has to pass before he's regained enough composure to behave. His head shakes a short note, delves back into the make out as if nothing's off.

Things  _are_ off, certainly; most recently, his glasses, having been folded and tossed a gentle bit to the nightstand. Off is the fabric of his button down, sliding from his arms and decorating the carpet in its luxurious material. A line of kisses runs up his chest. He trembles.

Foreplay's a gift, but they've an ache for touch so close it burns them dual. The shadow of it's the ghost of nails down his thighs, hot puffs of breath on his cock while his hands grapple to clutch at anything tangible. Naegi's hardly a man to succumb to others' pleasuring him, but the heat that envelops him is too much to decline with lips chapped sanely. His back arches, and the bob to Togami's head drives him so positively  _wild,_ that its halt feels a punishable offense.

It comes in light of another shuddering mewl. He really cannot stop the melt of groans from his mouth- it's Togami Byakuya's own damn fault for being so skilled at giving blow jobs. He cannot stop his moaning, until it is that he's left with nothing to give gratitude to, just the lift of his head to match again with that same moonlit stare.

"I-If you want to stop," comes in a choke, "we can stop."

But it isn't that, or at least does not seem to be. Judged solely by the exhilaration in his performance- he seems genuinely to  _want_ to continue, just cannot bring himself to. Naegi feels the drum of fingertips on a thigh.

"That sense..." he says vaguely, cheek in a bite, "that you've done something already, despite knowing you have not done it."

"Déjà vu." Elbows bend under to support his lean upwards.

"Right..." The twist to his confused frown comes undone to reclaim dick in his mouth. Naegi falls back flat, sigh pleasantly breathless.

His cheek turns against the sheet's coolness, hand falling to stroke through lush blonde. That beautiful, beautiful mouth works magic in all the right ways, and he bites his lip to keep from sobbing in pleasure.

Their bodies align in a twin, all limbs and heat and lust. He tastes himself in the next mouth to mouth, tastes the murky depths of midnight in his feathering kisses, more tender than he's known anything to be before.

And each and every domino falls flat on its face in remarkable synchronicity.

"Fuck me," he breathes across his lips, fingers fitting precise into the grooves of his shoulders, "Fuck me until I'm moaning your name and pleading for more."

They split into two forms once more, Togami bolting to upright haunches whilst the other stays beneath him.

"What did you just say?

"Uh..." Skin takes shade of blossoming rose petals. "Sorry. Was that too much?"

"It-" And he stops himself. Naegi's thinks himself a royal fuck-up when the bed shifts underneath the weight of his movements, planting steps to the floor. He sits upright, watching his shuffle to gather clothing from its rumpled pile. Hot at the ears, he's poised to apologize again, to say he'd gotten too eager too quickly. There's no chance, however; the slacks drop back to the rug, leaving behind his whole being compressed in a six inch rectangle, which he lifts to his face all the while fixing the other in pinning suspicion.

The whining drone of automated dispatch is audible through the room's dead silence. He barks back commands at it. Naegi squints in overtaking confusion.

Then his own phone rings. And the blood through his veins runs in gelid rivulets.

His fingers quake around the answer.

"...Hey, you."

* * *

He cannot believe his luck. His luck- really, lack thereof.

Or perhaps it  _is_ luck. It's a rough, what, one in one hundred billion, to find out the person he's been seeing lately is the same person who's voice he's jacked off to for the past year?

And he'd the  _audacity_  to treat it like some game.  _Hey, you._ What the actual kind of  _fuckery-_

"This isn't happening." He drops the call, drops the phone to the ground. His mind runs a mile-a-millisecond, and he's sure his eyes are apt to pop right from his goddamn skull should they widen any further. He clutches his forehead in a sudden dizzy. "This absolutely  _is not_ happening."

To say he's the only one battered in astonishment would be a punch to the gut of veracity; Naegi (or should he say,  _Kitten-)_ gapes blankly at him, empty call still held frozen to his ear. Before his knees have the gall to buckle, he places himself to the edge of the bed, throat clogged with the pound of his heart.

"So..." he hears after what could be a solid hour of swirling into incredulity's dark abyss, "Polaris Polan-"

" _Don't."_ He whips his seething over a shoulder.

Naegi flinches, but tries a smile in anxiety's shield. "You, uh...sound a lot different over the phone than in person."

"You're one to talk," he scoffs, and it's true. The flirty  _coquette_ sing-song matches in no way to his normal tone of regularity. "I thought you were a  _woman,_  for Christ's sake."

Fazed, he seems naught. Instead it is the slightest thoughtful touch of finger to chin. As he speaks, he wrestles the blankets up to cover his waist. "Wait, so-  _jeez,_ this is really confusing." His eyes catch the light of confidence. "So you just called me while we were at dinner, to break up with me, so you could...date me?"

"I didn't know it was  _you."_ His pale fizzles to an indignant flush. "And I didn't  _break up_ with you, either. We were never together."

"But we  _are_  together," Naegi argues. "Well... _we_ are. Not...Kitten and Polaris. Well, I guess,  _technically-"_

"Makoto." Fingers pinch his nose's bridge. "Just,  _please,_ shut the fuck up for two seconds."

What even is he to  _think?_ The situation's akin to smashing his his skull into cinder. Whether or not his wording had been spot on, Naegi had been correct; he'd "broken up" with his fantasy partner in order to take on one more realistic, more  _there_ and true. Painful as it may have been, he'd swerved his life's course back to that of a refined adult- only to crash in his own exhaust smog. And, as much as he resents the idea, he  _does_ recall saying that disgusting little  _L_ word over the phone the night past. He recalls the flavor of euphoria it'd left on his lips, angel food cake and the gift of life, recalls the smitten little spring in his step the morning that'd followed.  _This_ morning, this very morning, and everything's moving so damn fast, and if he'd never lost the screw from his glasses, he'd never know what an angel fallen to earth looks like. If he hadn't seen him- he'd've never had the impetuous desire to smash the stupid carafe just to have an excuse to see him again, and- and why's he so hung up on Naegi Makoto, when it's truly his persona who'd caused this whole mess? Kitten the phone slut- there lies his issue. But, again,  _there,_ on the bed beside him, lies his issue, in full on, real, true form.

He cannot believe his luck.

But, with a glance toward the haze of him, the haze of  _them,_  Togami decides, no, it most certainly is not luck.

It's fate.

And likewise, he decides Naegi K-for-Kitten Makoto is for certain the love of his life.

But he decides not to tell him that.

The kiss is enough of a tell-all, he thinks.

"I guess I should thank you," he feels against the corner of his mouth. "You pretty much paid off my student loans."

His glare pushes him back down, towers a straddle atop him to leave his bones a luscious throb. It's the encounter they've spoken of for far too long, spilt filth over their desires prolonged enough to make it seem a goal out of reach. But they're...they're  _real,_ and it's a messy lovely ludicrous fester of twinned souls, and words alone could have never prepared them thoroughly for how it feels once it's actually happening, touching and moaning and clinging to one another as if the world should depart soon from its orbit.

Layman's- it's the most glorious fuck he's ever had in his life, and by the time it's over, he's a sweaty mess of shallow pants and static insides.

And he  _loves_ it.

Something reads tentative in the way he's touched next. Naegi's the warmth of ten suns to his supernova heartbeat, turning inward to cuddle himself a key to its lock. Fireworks are their connecting forms, then, after the sex is all done and they're just humans beneath one blanket and beneath one moon, locked aside one another, tracing idles lines up the indents of his arms.

"So that annoying retail worker you complained about," he murmurs. "That was me?"

His breath of laughter pulses between them. "Of course it was." He catches his smile lit in night's glow, and floats on divinity. "And you were imagining someone else the whole time you sucked me off."

" _Okay-_ " The smile goes to a purse. "I was imagining it was you."

"But you didn't know that."

He quirks his head a measure sidelong. "Are you getting jealous of yourself?"

"Perhaps." Sweetness carries length of cotton with her. He's all sorts of intoxicated from the depths of everything,  _his_ everything. "...Was I truly your favorite caller?"

Laughter. It's more reward than he could ever hope to know. "Of course. I mean it- I really cared about you."

"...Past tense," he mumbles, and his lips get sealed with kisses before he can even assert the satire.

"Present tense." Their hands lock between them. "And future, if you're lucky."

Luck's a powder keg for him. Either way, he knows it not a necessary implement any longer, knows the beauty lain aside him is meant to be as so, meant to stay as so. And that names do not matter, and he's known this feeling for a year's gone by already, merely had the convolution of placing it.

By what he'd said, he still does live, in the mist of romance's shadows, in the hazy lovely glory he wishes to keep furled in the space just above his heart.

He really is the most wonderful person he's ever known.


End file.
